End of Recorded History as an End of Oppression
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End of Recorded History as an End of Oppression:
A Simpler Life with Happiness
“Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yesterday or today is. It springs around, eats, rests, digests, jumps up again, and so from morning to night and from day to day, with its likes and dislikes closely tied to the peg of the moment, and thus neither melancholy nor weary. To witness this is hard for man, because he boasts to himself that his human race is better than the beast and yet looks with jealousy at its happiness”.
Most cultures or societies that have existed have some type of recorded history. History is commonly defined as, the aggregate of past events of human affairs; or something that belongs to the past. Marx says, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. I reject this claim that history of society is only of class struggles, I would counter that history of society is a story of group struggles or personal struggles where one represents a group. Recorded social history tells a story, whether its written, painted, carved, spoken, or sung. History is also extremely exclusive because it is only told in the eyes of the story teller (historian), but as we all know there are always two sides to the same story. Take the fictional history of, The Three Little Pigs, a childrens book. In the version that is told to many young children the wolf is seen as a villain whom does harm against his neighbors, the defenseless little pigs until he is justly defeated by the righteous pigs. But in The True Story of the Three Little Pigs as told by A. Wolf, he is afflicted by a terrible cold and destroys the pigs homes accidentally and is then insulted by the pigs causing his anger. What we learn from this is that history is not objective as many believe but extremely subjective and is told from the perception of the historian, which has been traditionally wealthy white men. How different would the world look if history was told from a womans perspective instead of a males; would women be the constant to be compared and be the “Other” to be compared to, instead the reverse.
Social history lets us look back, seeing both good and bad things, allowing us to learn from our mistakes and prevent such mistakes from happening in the future; or so we believe. Many believe that by knowing history we can prevent committing the same atrocities that have been done in the past, but this is not true. As the quote by Winston Churchill goes, “If you dont know history then you are doomed to repeat it”, this statement is accepted by most without realizing that history is one of the main reasons oppression exists in all societies and why simple happiness can not be found. Are we truly better knowing history when it has been shown we have not learned from our past? If we have learned from history why does slave trade still exist in America, why do totalitarian